When we were writing this strip, Mr. Gribbs asked if I was going to play Diorblo with Dabe after, on our #Fridabe stream. I told him… well, the whole conversation is literally in the strip. I don't have to go over it all again here. Suffice it to say that we did end up playing for a while before he had to go draw something you will like, and then he left.
We had a pretty good time, except for when Mork was trying to ruin my bit. It's an unforgivable sin, and I'm afraid "the lash" is our only conceivable remedy. I don't make the rules! Not exclusively, at any rate. I am on the board that does make the rules, though. Do I have an outsized level of influence in that space? Absolutely - as its founder and Prime Vizirath, it would be accurate to say I "dominate" it. Don't focus on that! Focus on the forthcoming barrage of high intensity strikes with whips and rods - I'll share the details and viewing opportunities soon.
Someone was mad that we were streaming the game, or had bought it, which I understand. It's not like I haven't considered it. I simply made a different choice utilizing the same matrix of information available to anyone else. At root: I don't know how to punish Bobby Kotick without also punishing the people who made this game.
Sometimes, if a person is asking questions, they are said to be "just asking questions" which is very bad. This is meant to indicate that they are asking questions not to resolve a quandary or to arrive at the truth by consensus, but that they are evil monsters who already know the answer and tricking people into saying it is their kink. That's not me. I genuinely don't know how to answer this and I am attempting to outsource some portion of my cognition so that I can resolve it, or barring that, think out loud here long enough to arrive at it.
I don't think it's possible for Bobby Kotick to be punished by this society in any meaningful way, least of all by me. The lowest net worth I could find for him is six hundred million dollars, and when this acquisition goes through he'll be removed - as though by a claw machine - and he will be set loose upon the world, ravenous, and draconically wealthy. He is capable of even greater malevolence elsewhere and I'm confident he will have the opportunity.
Back to Diablo. The way I conceive of it, Blizzard was once definitional in a host of genres and is now considered to be in decline. They've bled an incredible amount of talent, independent of those who were cast out for their gruesome behavior. Overwatch 2, and the efforts it is meant to spearhead, are a debacle rapidly approaching fiasco status. Diablo IV is… good. Delineating the ways it's good isn't a functional part of this argument, we can talk about that later, except to say that it feels like Old Blizzard. The Auto-Buy Blizzard. It's a shocking treatise.
I can't imagine how it must feel to be there, to be the ones that endured wickedness we're all decrying, and then to be subject to some kind of soft boycott maneuver because you… kept your job? You clocked in every day, relied on each other, and then fucking killed it under the most insane development conditions? I hate that lesson. And I won't teach it.
(CW)TB out.
